Dr. Hokmabadi is the owner of Total Health Dental Care, a practice with five offices around the East Bay of San Francisco, including Oakland and Berkeley. He created Dr. H. and Co. because he was fed up with the low-grade and flat-out toxic products on the market.

My Journey: Or How I Learned to Stop Recommending Toxic Mouthwash

When I began practicing as a dentist in Oakland, my clinical observations portrayed a stark contrast to what I had learned in dental school. I noticed the commercial mouthwashes promoted by the pharmaceutical giants were not improving my patients’ health, and, in many cases, these chemical products were causing harm.

One day an “herbalist” from a natural food company came in for a checkup. I reviewed his x-rays and could tell immediately that he was a candidate for dentures—the images indicated his teeth were loose. When I examined his mouth, however, I was blown away—this guy had perfectly healthy teeth! He was somehow tightening his teeth using a holistic mouthwash with herbal ingredients. I had to figure out what was going on.

I was skeptical of the word holistic, scared to utter the sounds for fear that my dental professors would scoff. But the conflict between what I was taught in school and what I observed daily led me to research the efficacy of chemical rinses compared to natural versions with herbal ingredients.

The business of money-making had once again overtaken common sense and clinical data. The multinational pharmaceutical companies lie to us and herbs that have been used effectively for thousands of years are replaced by cheap chemicals mass-produced and bottled in enormous factories. Studies of holistic benefits are discredited and suppressed as non-profitable pursuits—after all, natural ingredients cost more. All that matters to these companies is squeezing the highest possible profit margins out of the artificially-colored liquids racing down the production line. Marketing eclipses the truth and the public mindlessly swishes chemical rinses without the promised results.

After years of research, I created Refresh: a completely natural, no-nonsense herbal mouthwash with hand-picked ingredients and a simple recipe for the best in oral health.